An interactive Question and Answer (Q&A) system receives a questions, searches a data store for one or more answers, and provides the answers. The Q&A system is interactive in that the Q&A system may also ask questions of the user to narrow or filter the search for an answer. The data store typically stores sound files or text files that may be read out loud.
When a user interacts with a Q&A system and tries to listen and fully understand questions that the Q&A system generates from a machine generated text, the user may be challenged by the fast spoken text provided by the Q&A system. The user has to either ask for more clarifications or somehow replay the question manually.
In other cases, the user tries to hear a voicemail or watch a video clip on-line, and the user has to hit the replay button several times if a certain message was spoken too fast or was not spoken clearly. This is rather time consuming.
Things may get worse when it comes down to the user depending on assistive technology, such as a screen reader, to work or in daily life. It is not efficient if the user has to manually have the screen reader read the same long paragraph again and again.